Jacques-Yves
Cousteau, co-inventor of the
first SCUBA equipment, was both the world's first SCUBA diver and the
world's first SCUBA cave diver. However, many cave divers penetrated
caves prior to the advent of SCUBA with surface supplied UBA through
the use of umbilical hoses and compressors. SCUBA diving in all its
forms, including cave diving, has advanced in earnest since he
introduced the aqua-Lung in 1943.
UK history
The Cave Diving Group (CDG) was established informally in the United Kingdom in 1935 to organise training and equipment for the exploration of flooded caves in the Mendip Hills of Somerset. The first dive was made by Jack Sheppard on 4 October 1936, using a home-made drysuit surface fed from a modified bicycle pump, which allowed Sheppard to pass Sump 1 of Swildon's Hole. Swildon's is an upstream feeder to the Wookey Hole resurgence system. The difficulty of access to the sump in Swildon's prompted operations to move to the resurgence, and the larger cave there allowed use of conventional "hard hat" equipment which was secured from the Siebe Gorman company. The left photograph on the standard diving dress page will give some indication of the scale of operations this entailed. In UK cave diving, the term "Sherpa" is used without a drop of irony for the people who carry the diver's gear although recently this has gone out of fashion support is more normally used, and before the development of SCUBA equipment such undertakings could be monumental operations.
Diving in the spacious third chamber of Wookey Hole led to a rapid series of advances, each of which was dignified by being given a successive number, until an air surface was reached at what is now known as "Chamber 9." Some of these dives were broadcast live on BBC radio, which must have been a quite surreal experience for both diver and audience.
Cave diving equipment in the museum at Wookey Hole Caves
The number of sites where standard diving dress could be used is clearly limited and there was little further progress before the outbreak of World War II reduced the caving community considerably. However, the rapid development of underwater warfare through the war made a lot of surplus equipment available. The CDG re-formed in 1946 and progress was rapid. Typical equipment at this time was a frogman rubber diving suit for insulation (water temperature in the UK is typically 4 °C), an oxygen diving cylinder, soda lime absorbent canister and counter-lung comprising a rebreather air system and an "AFLOLAUN," meaning "Apparatus For Laying Out Line And Underwater Navigation." The AFLOLAUN consisted of lights, line-reel, compass, notebook (for the survey), batteries, and more.
Progress was typically by "bottom walking", as this was considered less dangerous than swimming (note the absence of buoyancy controls). The use of oxygen put a depth limit on the dive, which was considerably mitigated by the extended dive duration. This was the normal diving equipment and methods until approximately 1960 when new techniques using wetsuits (which provide both insulation and buoyancy compensation), twin open-circuit SCUBA air systems the development of side mounting cylinders, helmet-mounted lights and free-swimming with fins. The increasing capacity and pressure rating of air bottles also extended dive durations.
U.S. History
In the 1970s, cave diving greatly increased in popularity among divers in the United States. However, there were very few experienced cave divers and almost no formal classes to handle the surge in interest. The result was a large number of divers trying to cave dive without any formal training. This resulted in more than 100 fatalities over the course of the decade. The state of Florida came close to banning SCUBA diving around the cave entrances. The cave diving organizations responded to the problem by creating training programs and certifying instructors, in addition to other measures to try to prevent these fatalities. This included posting signs, adding no-lights rules, and other enforcements.
In the United States, Sheck Exley was a pioneering cave diver who first explored many Florida underwater cave systems, and many other underwater cave systems throughout the US and the world. On February 6, 1974, Exley was also the first chairman of the Cave Diving Section of the National Speleological Society. He also collected the documentation of cave diving accidents since 1948 from NSS-CDS and NACD and develop the first accident analysis, extrapolating the five contributing factors to diver fatalities.
Since the 1980s, prevention measures to reduce diver fatalities have been successful, and today it is rare for an untrained diver to die in an underwater cave, despite later surges in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. The 1980s saw a few refinements to the equipment used for cave diving, most importantly better lights and smaller batteries. In the 1990s equipment configurations became a little more standard than they had been in the past, due mostly to the WKPP's adaptation and popularization of the Hogarthian Rig, a concept credited to Bill
"Hogarth" Main which
states not to take what you don't need, keep it simple and streamline.
Documentary films made by Wes Skiles and Jill Heinerth have contributed to the increasing popularity of cave diving in the early 21st century.
Many sites today have strict rules about diving within one's level of training and requiring proof of that level, more so than most recreational diving sites elsewhere in the country. Today, the cave community is most focused on training, exploration, public awareness, and cave conservation. Different organizations place different emphasis on these priorities.
(from Wikipedia)
UK history
The Cave Diving Group (CDG) was established informally in the United Kingdom in 1935 to organise training and equipment for the exploration of flooded caves in the Mendip Hills of Somerset. The first dive was made by Jack Sheppard on 4 October 1936, using a home-made drysuit surface fed from a modified bicycle pump, which allowed Sheppard to pass Sump 1 of Swildon's Hole. Swildon's is an upstream feeder to the Wookey Hole resurgence system. The difficulty of access to the sump in Swildon's prompted operations to move to the resurgence, and the larger cave there allowed use of conventional "hard hat" equipment which was secured from the Siebe Gorman company. The left photograph on the standard diving dress page will give some indication of the scale of operations this entailed. In UK cave diving, the term "Sherpa" is used without a drop of irony for the people who carry the diver's gear although recently this has gone out of fashion support is more normally used, and before the development of SCUBA equipment such undertakings could be monumental operations.
Diving in the spacious third chamber of Wookey Hole led to a rapid series of advances, each of which was dignified by being given a successive number, until an air surface was reached at what is now known as "Chamber 9." Some of these dives were broadcast live on BBC radio, which must have been a quite surreal experience for both diver and audience.
Cave diving equipment in the museum at Wookey Hole Caves
The number of sites where standard diving dress could be used is clearly limited and there was little further progress before the outbreak of World War II reduced the caving community considerably. However, the rapid development of underwater warfare through the war made a lot of surplus equipment available. The CDG re-formed in 1946 and progress was rapid. Typical equipment at this time was a frogman rubber diving suit for insulation (water temperature in the UK is typically 4 °C), an oxygen diving cylinder, soda lime absorbent canister and counter-lung comprising a rebreather air system and an "AFLOLAUN," meaning "Apparatus For Laying Out Line And Underwater Navigation." The AFLOLAUN consisted of lights, line-reel, compass, notebook (for the survey), batteries, and more.
Progress was typically by "bottom walking", as this was considered less dangerous than swimming (note the absence of buoyancy controls). The use of oxygen put a depth limit on the dive, which was considerably mitigated by the extended dive duration. This was the normal diving equipment and methods until approximately 1960 when new techniques using wetsuits (which provide both insulation and buoyancy compensation), twin open-circuit SCUBA air systems the development of side mounting cylinders, helmet-mounted lights and free-swimming with fins. The increasing capacity and pressure rating of air bottles also extended dive durations.
U.S. History
In the 1970s, cave diving greatly increased in popularity among divers in the United States. However, there were very few experienced cave divers and almost no formal classes to handle the surge in interest. The result was a large number of divers trying to cave dive without any formal training. This resulted in more than 100 fatalities over the course of the decade. The state of Florida came close to banning SCUBA diving around the cave entrances. The cave diving organizations responded to the problem by creating training programs and certifying instructors, in addition to other measures to try to prevent these fatalities. This included posting signs, adding no-lights rules, and other enforcements.
In the United States, Sheck Exley was a pioneering cave diver who first explored many Florida underwater cave systems, and many other underwater cave systems throughout the US and the world. On February 6, 1974, Exley was also the first chairman of the Cave Diving Section of the National Speleological Society. He also collected the documentation of cave diving accidents since 1948 from NSS-CDS and NACD and develop the first accident analysis, extrapolating the five contributing factors to diver fatalities.
Since the 1980s, prevention measures to reduce diver fatalities have been successful, and today it is rare for an untrained diver to die in an underwater cave, despite later surges in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. The 1980s saw a few refinements to the equipment used for cave diving, most importantly better lights and smaller batteries. In the 1990s equipment configurations became a little more standard than they had been in the past, due mostly to the WKPP's adaptation and popularization of the Hogarthian Rig, a concept credited to Bill
"Hogarth" Main which
states not to take what you don't need, keep it simple and streamline.Documentary films made by Wes Skiles and Jill Heinerth have contributed to the increasing popularity of cave diving in the early 21st century.
Many sites today have strict rules about diving within one's level of training and requiring proof of that level, more so than most recreational diving sites elsewhere in the country. Today, the cave community is most focused on training, exploration, public awareness, and cave conservation. Different organizations place different emphasis on these priorities.
(from Wikipedia)